C# – Visual Studio Express can’t debug – “The debugger is not properly installed”

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I have recently set up Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition on my laptop (running XP SP3) to develop some c# .net code for a website. All seemed to be working great, I can edit code and the website runs in IIS…

The problem came when I hit F5 to debug. I get the following error message:

"Unable to attach to application 'WebDev.WebServer.EXE' (PID: 3520) using 'VITCH2000'. The debugger is not properly installed. Cannot debug the requested type of code. Run setup to install or repair the debugger"

I have googled the error message and spent hours trying various fixes but no joy. The debugger refuses to work. I also repaired the .net framework (2, 3 and 3.5) and uninstalled/ reinstalled/ repaired Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition but the same error remains.

I also re-registered the dlls in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VS7Debug and even deleted them all between uninstalling and re-installing but nothing seems to help.

Does anyone know which setup I am meant to run or a way to make this debugger work? Any ideas much appreciated!

Best Answer

This is just a shot in the dark, but you might try to install the Visual C# 2008 Express Edition and see if you can import your web project into that edition and debug it from there. Its been a while since I've worked with the Express editions, but I seem to recall using the Visual C# 2005 Express Edition to run web applications.